How many people pass the Gamsat?
How many people pass the Gamsat?
It is not straightforward to answer how many people pass the Gamsat since there is no set pass mark in Gamsat.
Instead, the universities decide how many people they want to interview for each place available on their courses, which is usually a minimum of three, and then select the top performing candidates in the Gamsat each year to fill these interview places.
After the interview stage, some universities also take candidates Gamsat score into consideration when deciding to offer a place on the course or not.
For example, at the University of Sydney offers of places are based 50% on interview performance and 50% on Gamsat score.
So an applicant could score highly enough in Gamsat to be called to interview but lose out on a place to another candidate who scored lower in Gamsat but better in the interview (or vice versa).
Defining a Pass In Gamsat
So based on the above we have two possible definitions of what a "pass" in Gamsat means.
The first definition of a pass is "a score high enough to be called to interview".
The second definition of a pass is "a score high enough to eventually be offered a place".
How Many People Pass?
The second definition is the easiest to use when answering the initial question of how many people pass, because the answer is simply the sum total of places available on all courses which use Gamsat.
In Australia for example there are twelve universities which require Gamsat for courses such as medicine, dentistry, optometry, pharmacy and podiatry.
In total places on these courses in 2021 totalled 2455 places (of which 2128 were for medicine).
So by this definition we can say that 2455 people passed Gamsat in Australia in the 2020 test for university entry in 2021.
Answering the question using our first definition is somewhat harder since the medical schools do not release statistics regarding how many people they interview each year.
However by using the reported cut off scores (the lowest score which students have reported secured them an interview) and comparing this to the percentile curve chart which ACER releases after every test and which shows us the percentage of candidates who achieved a range of scores we can approximate a percentage of candidates who scored high enough to be called to interview.
Using this data in most years a score in the range 60 to 65 would achieve you an invitation to interview in Australia and the UK, with slightly lower scores being required at some UK institutions.
This is equivalent to the top 20% to 25% of those taking the test, although people at the lower end of the range may not be guaranteed an interview as they either may have applied to institutions requiring a higher score or they may have lost out to other people with a similar Gamsat score, but higher GPA etc.
So to gain an interview we can say that 25% of people pass Gamsat.
How many people is that equivalent to?
To answer this we need to know how many people are actually taking the test each year.
How Many People Sit The Gamsat Each Year?
Unfortunately ACER do not release these numbers so we have to make an estimation from the few official figures that have been released.
For a more in depth discussion of this please see our other article - How Many People Sit The GAMSAT Each Year?
The last official figures from ACER related to the 2014 sitting when they revealed that 9307 people sat the test that year.
However since then the number of institutions which require Gamsat as part of the selection process has increased from 24 in 2014 to 35 in 2021.
In addition in 2014 the number of candidates repeating Gamsat for a second or third time was increasing and this trend is likely to have continued so we can conservatively estimate that the total number of people sitting Gamsat worldwide has increased to at least 15,000.
If we apply the 25% success rate to this number as estimated above this gives us a total number of 3750 people pass the Gamsat each year worldwide.